No such thing as a “clean slate” for ex-offenders, a system of caste

We make ourselves less secure when we fail to afford the ex-offender means to fully re-integrate back into society as a legally whole person.

Think that after you’ve served your time, paid your fine and made restitution to your victims that you can then finally rejoin society as a full member (a process that typically takes a minimum of five years not including jail)?

Think again.

As a convicted felon in America, you are both legally and professionally crippled for the rest of your life. No way back.

Total number of laws in the United States –
304,600 estimated and counting,
55 additional created each day.

Felony

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The term felony, in some common law countries, means a serious crime. The word originates from English common law (from the French medieval word “félonie”), where felonies were originally crimes that involved confiscation of a convicted person’s land and goods. Other crimes were called misdemeanors. Many common law countries have now abolished the felony/misdemeanor distinction and replaced it with other distinctions, such as between indictable offences and summary offences. A felony is generally considered a crime of high seriousness, while a misdemeanor is not.

A person who has committed a felony is a felon, and upon conviction of a felony in a court of law is known as a convicted felon or a convict. In the United States, where the felony/misdemeanor distinction is still widely applied, the federal government defines a felony as a crime punishable by death or imprisonment in excess of one year. If punishable by exactly one year or less, it is classified as a misdemeanor. Note that the actual prison sentence handed out has no effect on this; the decision is based on the maximum sentence possible under law. For example, if a person is sentenced to six months, but the charge can be “up to two years”, it counts as a felony, in spite of the actual time served being well under a year.[1] Individual states may differ in this definition, using other categories as seriousness or context.

The Swiss Difference: A Gun Culture That Works

Similar to felonies in some civil law countries (Italy, Spain) are delicts, whereas in others (France, Belgium, Switzerland) crimes (more serious) and delicts (délits, less serious); and still in others (Brazil, Portugal), crimes and delicts are synonymous (more serious), as opposed to contraventions (less serious).

The ex-offender has a life-long artificial handicap that makes them vulnerable to exploitation by people far more dangerous than themselves. Why do you think you can’t get a security clearance if you have a bunch of outstanding debt? Because debt makes you vulnerable to manipulation. It is the same for the ex-offender who is legally less of a person than those surrounding him or her. They end up being exploited by the very government that locked them up. A life-long, permanent disability. The “Deep State” then takes control.

We have a “Shadow Government” in this country comprised of different factions (mafias), some benevolent and some not. All however, are vying for the control of us. No one is more vulnerable to the influencing of and co-opting by this type of officially sanctioned criminal organization, than the ex-offender. A person who has less legal protections nor ability to function than anyone else in society. Ever wonder how revolutions are fomented in other countries? They are accomplished by scooping up the disenfranchised from the depths of society and elevating them to states previously not afforded by the mainstream, states imbued with legal impunity and subversion. History has shown that it is dangerous to maintain such a hopeless population within one’s midst.

My argument is simple. Just as the government employed criminals in the Old West like Wyatt Earp or the Italian Mafias more recently, the same thing is happening with Gang Stalking today only this time, the goal is the total destruction of America.

“There is no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”

I’ll Be Seeing You (1944 film)

Oscar winner Ginger Rogers and Joseph Cotten top a stellar cast in this tender wartime love story about two troubled strangers who meet by chance and try to crowd a lifetime of love and laughter into eight days. “Studded with brilliant performances” (Variety), I’ll Be Seeing You “manages to ambush your emotions and hasten your heart beats” (Hollywood Citizen-News). After serving half of a prison sentence for accidental manslaughter, Mary Marshall (Rogers) is allowed a holiday furlough to visit her family. Keeping her history a secret, she falls in love with a kindhearted GI (Cotten) who’s struggling to overcome shell shock. Both long for a normal life. But can they have it if he learns the truth about her?

In the United States there is no way for someone convicted of a crime to ever make themselves a whole citizen again with full restoration of their civil and constitutional rights. We have millions of people living here who don’t enjoy all the rights and benefits of the United States Constitution, for the rest of their lives. A permanent “underclass” trapped in a caste of undesirables reminiscent of Jim Crow. Need I tell you that it is both a self-perpetuating and dangerous thing to maintain said population in ones very own midst, with neither the incentive nor ability to work for redemption? The Shadow Government however, welcomes these people with open arms and industriously exploits their unique talents as;

any other nefarious tasks they can be found useful for or are already proficient in…

And why wouldn’t the offender go along? They have effectively been rendered non-citizens by society anyway, nothing but upsides when compared to living as a destitute outcast. They get to continue their crimes with government sanction to boot and little to no expected punishment. Totally outside of the system and without their former accountability, equipped with an inexhaustible “get out of jail free card”. All they gotta do is stay loyal to their new gang, the Shadow Government and everything is golden.

“But they broke the law, if they get legally crippled for the rest of their lives then it’s their own fault”

“What about the victim, I’m tired of bleeding hearts trying to coddle criminals all the time. Who cares for their victims?”

“We should do what some other countries do and just throw them in a warehouse together or execute them, I don’t want them around me…”

All seemingly reasonable arguments and having been in jail before I will admit that, there are a lot of people who need to be locked up for sure. Kind of ridiculous sounding however, when viewed in light of the points made above. Most of these people do get released someday, the problem being that they are now permanently crippled. When we use the criminal justice system as a means of political control and apply the penalties unevenly, we create option deprived monsters ripe for the picking within our midst. It just doesn’t make good sense and is embarrassingly naive. The criminal justice system has been hijacked by covert interests and is no longer tasked with keeping society safe rather, it is being used to control, enrich and eliminate. We are unwittingly manufacturing their foot soldiers.

To illustrate my point, a few quick facts;

Martha Stewart goes to prison for lying to a federal agent while Hillary Clinton contemplates run for Governor of New York.

Financial incentive to lock people up due to private prisons and “Prison Industries”. Huge slave labor workforce.

Only one banking executive went to jail over the Subprime Mortgage crisis of 2008 which doubled the unemployment rate, doubled the National Debt and cost Americans 15 trillion dollars in banker bailouts.

Parolees often spend only ninety days in prison for violating parole by committing serious and violent felonies, even rape and murder.

Unknown to the general public, the Department Of Corrections is an appendage of the Shadow Government.

“Somebody recently figured out that we have 35 million laws to enforce the ten commandments.”

-Attributed to both Bert Masterson and Earl Wilson

There are many practicing attorneys that passionately state an ex-offender should be fully restored automatically after completing their sentence and an appropriate amount of time without re-offending, typically five years. Five years of formal probation or parole is the standard amount of time one has to endure for conviction of a felony, the successful completion of which demonstrating rehabilitation. One must stay crime free for ten years, a decade, before one can apply for a Governor’s Pardon, a process I will be embarking on shortly. Unfortunately, a Governor’s Pardon is completely at the discretion of the Governor no matter what the ex-offender has done to prove their rehabilitation. Traditionally, pardon’s are usually only granted to political operatives as compensation for doing the dirty work of governorship, rehabilitation be damned. Again, the “Shadow Government” at work. Some Governors grant no pardons at all, perhaps a bit more honest.

I suppose the ex-offender should feel lucky to have just survived the criminal justice system, many innocent people were killed by the death penalty until DNA exonerated so many and proved the system flawed. What does it say about California that they are one of the few states that voted to keep it? And what ever happened to all of those crime lab technicians who got busted for falsifying physical evidence? Did they have to go to prison? What about the hundreds of thousands of innocent lives they destroyed and for whom did they do it? They did it for the “Deep State Shadow Government” of course. They were, like much of law enforcement, Gang Stalkers eliminating Targeted Individuals.

Disgraced SFPD Lab Tech Deborah Madden Avoids Jail

Former SFPD crime lab technician Deborah Madden, who plead guilty in March to misdemeanor cocaine possession after two federal trials on greater charges ended with hung juries, has skirted jail time and was sentenced in U.S. district court last week to one year of home confinement.

She’ll also get five years of probation, a $5,000 fine, and will have to serve 300 hours of community service.

Prosecutors tried unsuccessfully to get Madden tossed in the clink for at least a year in light of the circumstances through which she obtained the cocaine — namely a mishandling of evidence in the crime lab in 2009 which lead to the dismissal of 700 criminal cases. Juries, however, when Madden was tried on charges of obtaining cocaine by deception or fraud, took pity on the 63-year-old, who has been sober since the incidents in 2009 and was likely one of several SFPD employees who tampered with or otherwise mishandled drug evidence. (You may recall the earlier testimony that everyone in the crime lab used to “laugh” at small discrepancies in the weight of drugs in evidence envelopes. And all that investigators ever found in Madden’s possession was less than one tenth of one gram of coke.)

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that our criminal justice system just doesn’t work, it serves special interests rather than the people. There is no way that the average citizen can affect it either, most employee positions are by appointment. A concerted effort has been made by covert interests to corrupt the judiciary, prosecutorial, corrections and police agencies that has largely been successful, only the facade of justice remains.

If there is ever going to be a solution, the path back to redemption has to be clearly defined for the offender. By the same token, the person also has to know that if they behave criminally there will certainly be clearly defined consequences which apply equally to everyone. Judicial, prosecutorial and police discretion is the Devil in the details here, they need to arrest, prosecute and try every valid crime or be held accountable if they don’t. Should more manpower (or woman-power) be needed to accomplish this then give it to them. Everyone will then know where they stand in the eyes of the law and will make the smart choice to obey. There will always be however, a certain percentage of incorrigible deviants unable to control their behavior and it is those for whom prisons should be for. Offenders see the error of their ways and want to change should be afforded every opportunity to do so with a definite result assured, complete and total restoration of both their civil and constitutional rights. A legally whole person once more.

We also need to pare down the quantity of laws as well. Laws should only be written to define how people are actually living and only then when a novel problem arises. As it is now, we have somewhere in the neighborhood of between three hundred three thousand, six hundred (303,600) to three hundred four thousand, five hundred (304,500) laws total in the United States. Fifty five (55) new laws are being cranked out by legislators and politicians every day. You are expected to know each and every one of them too. Ignorance of the law is not a valid defense. Considering that the vast majority of us play no part in their authorship but yet have to live under them, I would say they are more tools of tyranny rather than instruments of justice.

Reynolds: You are probably breaking the law right now

When lawmakers don’t even know how many laws exist, how can citizens be expected to follow them?

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor, is the author of The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself.

Ignorance of the law, we are often told, is no excuse. “Every man is presumed to know the law,” says a long-established legal aphorism. And if you are charged with a crime, you would be well advised to rely on some other defense than “I had no idea that was illegal.”

But not everybody favors this state of affairs. While a century or two ago nearly all crime was traditional common-law crime — rape, murder, theft and other things that pretty much everyone should know are bad — nowadays we face all sorts of “regulatory crimes” in which intuitions of right and wrong play no role, but for which the penalties are high.

If you walk down the sidewalk, pick up a pretty feather, and take it home, you could be a felon — if it happens to be a bald eagle feather. Bald eagles are plentiful now, and were taken off the endangered species list years ago, but the federal law making possession of them a crime for most people is still on the books, and federal agents are even infiltrating some Native-American powwows in order to find and arrest people. (And feathers from lesser-known birds, like the red-tailed hawk are also covered). Other examples abound, from getting lost in a storm and snowmobiling on the wrong bit of federal land, to diverting storm sewer water around a building.

“Regulatory crimes” of this sort are incredibly numerous and a category that is growing quickly. They are the ones likely to trap unwary individuals into being felons without knowing it. That is why Michael Cottone, in a just-published Tennessee Law Reviewarticle, suggests that maybe the old presumption that individuals know the law is outdated, unfair and maybe even unconstitutional. “Tellingly,” he writes, “no exact count of the number of federal statutes that impose criminal sanctions has ever been given, but estimates from the last 15 years range from 3,600 to approximately 4,500.” Meanwhile, according to recent congressional testimony, the number of federal regulations (enacted by administrative agencies under loose authority from Congress) carrying criminal penalties may be as many as 300,000.

And it gets worse. While the old-fashioned common law crimes typically required a culpable mental state — you had to realize you were doing something wrong — the regulatory crimes generally don’t require any knowledge that you’re breaking the law. This seems quite unfair. As Cottone asks, “How can people be expected to know all the laws governing their conduct when no one even knows exactly how many criminal laws exist?”

Of course, we may hope that prosecutorial discretion will save us: Just explain to the nice prosecutor that we meant no harm, and violated the law by accident, and he or she will drop the charges and tell us to be more careful next time. And sometimes things work that way. But other times, the prosecutors are out to get you for your politics, your ethnicity, or just in order to fulfill a quota, in which case you will hear that the law is the law, and that ignorance is no excuse. (Amusingly, government officials who break the law do get to plead ignorance and good intentions, under the doctrine of good faith “qualified immunity.” Just not us proles.)

To solve this problem we need for judges to abandon the presumption that people know the law, at least where regulatory crimes are concerned, and require some proof that the accused knew or should reasonably have known that his conduct was illegal. Alternatively, Congress should adopt legislation requiring such proof. (And I would favor allowing defendants in any action brought by the federal government — civil or criminal — to have the option of arguing to the jury that the government’s action against them is unfair or biased, with the charges dropped and legal fees being charged to the government if the jury agrees.)

Under the vagueness doctrine, a law is void if a person of reasonable intelligence would have to guess at its meaning, because it would be unfair to punish someone for violating a law that cannot be understood. It seems just as unfair to punish people for violating a law that they couldn’t reasonably be expected to know about.

Law that can’t be known is no law at all. If we wish to remain a nation of laws, Congress and the courts need to address this problem, before it’s too late.

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